Kim Gordon on the Frightening Reality of Being Creatively Untethered

Kim Gordon considers herself, above all, an artist with a capital A. Even back in the early '80s, when the multidisciplinary creative came to prominence in the New York No Wave scene as a member of legendary noise-rock band Sonic Youth, she always viewed music as something of a side excursion. "I really live in the art world," she says. "That's always the way I think. That came first. The music was almost incidental, and was something I stumbled into."

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Now, even after years of firmly establishing herself as someone willing to push the boundaries of what defined "downtown cool," Gordon, 63, still downplays her impact as a musician. "We were never that premeditated about what we were doing," she says of Sonic Youth's low-key, albeit highly successful, attack on the mainstream, which consisted of loud guitars, feedback, and a healthy dose of take-it-or-leave-it brashness. "I'm amazed we made the kind of music we did and were able to create a niche audience."

Times have changed now, she offers. "People always ask, 'What advice would you give to a young band?' But we were so different. When we started, our objective wasn't to sign to a major label and make tons of money. It was just more of an organic process...There are people who write pop songs. A million people do that and there's a real science to it. We wanted to write pop songs—but our version."

Even today, Gordon maintains a healthy level of skepticism and genuine surprise that listeners of any stripe remain intrigued by her musical output. She figured few would pay much mind to her current project, Body/Head, a freeform avant-rock duo she formed in 2011 with friend and musician Bill Nace, who are set to release a new live album, No Waves, on November 11 via Matador Records. "When we first started the band, I thought it was great to play music and not worry about what it was going to be and if anyone was going to like it," she says. "I really thought no one would care anything about Body/Head or no [record label] would put it out. Luckily, people did like it."

Nonetheless, Gordon admits she's at an enviable point in her career: She says she can follow her artistic muse without much hesitation. Personal, almost therapeutic, pleasure drew her to the Body/Head project—"My favorite thing is getting lost in the music. It can seem kind of almost meditative when things are optimal"—and her recent decision to work with indie-pop producer Justin Raisen (Charli XCX, Sky Ferreira) for the song "Murdered Out," her first offering as a solo artist, was equally self-motivated. "I just had fun making it," she says of "Murdered Out," a throbbing homage to Los Angeles lowrider car culture. "It was effortless."

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More specifically, Gordon says she found it intriguing to watch Raisen, with whom she says she hopes to continue working, use her notoriously raspy voice as a digital instrument worthy of placement and manipulation. "It was kind of an interesting way to work," she says. "I'd never really worked that way. It was like improvising with a producer. Laying down vocals and having him shape it. It's the way that actors are, in a sense, where you don't have a lot of control. You're just part of a machine."

After a certain age, having your picture taken is traumatic.

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For years, being part of any machine—or rather, the music industry—was something Gordon appeared to simply tolerate; when I spoke to Body/Head a few years ago, Gordon barely spoke above a whisper, and let Nace do much of the talking. She'll tell you now she shies away from formal music projects, if only because of the promotion required. "That always makes you step back a little bit," she admits. "Like, 'I don't know if I have the energy.' After a certain age, having your picture taken is traumatic."

And yet when she calls from her native Los Angeles on a recent afternoon she is far more forthcoming and talkative than one might expect. Three years ago when speaking to ELLE for a revealing profile, Gordon seemed at a crossroads in her life in the wake of Sonic Youth's dissolution and her divorce from bandmate and longtime husband Thurston Moore. One senses she's now thriving on the uncertainty and unknown opportunities her current life offers: In the past few years, Gordon has released a critically acclaimed memoir, 2015's Girl in A Band ("I was really incredibly thrilled and surprised the book was so well-received"), showed her visual art in New York City, toured with Body/Head, and even posed with her daughter Coco Moore for a Marc Jacobs ad campaign. "I like doing projects with people I admire and like," she says. "It's really about that relationship and friendship. But art is something that's always there in varying degrees in my life."

Still, even Gordon admits the feeling of being creatively untethered can be a bit frightening. "I feel a bit ungrounded right now because I don't have any big projects [in the works]," she says. Gordon reveals she's "working on some art" but doesn't have any formal shows lined up. She says she might follow up her memoir with a novella. "It will be different, though. It will be more of an art project." As for her future musical output? "It's hard to say, 'I'm not doing that anymore,'" she admits. "I like performing. I like playing with Bill [Nace]. But I dunno." She pauses and lets out a nervous laugh. "I'm a slow developer."